Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

James Hitchcock British film buffs are often critical of Americans for their supposed indifference to foreign-language moves, but there are signs that the transatlantic phobia about subtitles has now spread to our own shores. Films from continental Europe were once fairly common on British television, but they have now all but disappeared from terrestrial channels, and even on specialist movie channels like Sky Movies, TCM and Film 4 they are few and far between. BBC4 is something of an exception. Following "The Killing" and "Borgen" that channel is currently having a love-affair with all things Danish, and it was there that I recently caught "Flame & Citron". It is said to be one of the most expensive Danish language movies ever, although the budget was only around six million pounds, peanuts by Hollywood standards. (Most Hollywood producers these days would pay out considerably more than that figure to meet the salary demands of just one of their film's stars). It is loosely based on actual events and deals with the Danish resistance movement during the latter part of World War II. The title refers to the code names of two members of the Holger Danske resistance group, Bent Faurschou-Hviid (known as Flame because of his red hair) and Jørgen Haagen Schmith (known as Citron, Danish for lemon, because he once worked for the Citroen car company). The film opens in 1943 when the tide of war is starting to turn against Germany, Hitherto the Resistance has largely confined itself to sabotage and assassinations of Danish collaborators. Flame and Citron now receive instructions from their controller, Aksel Winther, to pursue a campaign of attacks against the Nazi occupiers themselves, something the Resistance has previously avoided. Films about European Resistance movements made during the war or in the years immediately following it invariably had a simple moral structure. (I cannot recall any such movies actually set in Denmark, but there were numerous examples about other occupied countries, such as "The Day Will Dawn" and "The Heroes of Telemark", both about Norway, "One of Our Aircraft is Missing" about the Netherlands and "The Guns of Navarone" about Greece). The Resistance fighters are invariably shown as unambiguously heroic, as are their British or American allies, the Germans are unambiguously evil, and the local collaborators totally despicable. The film generally ends with our heroes having successfully performed some gallant feat of arms which will render invaluable assistance to the Allied war effort. "Flame and Citron" is quite different. Despite its World War Two setting, it bears more resemblance to a modern spy movie or to a neo- noir crime drama than a traditional "heroic Resistance" film. One might call it, on the analogy of the revisionist Western, a revisionist Resistance drama. There are no British or American commandos on hand to lend assistance. The attacks which Bent and Jørgen carry out are only of doubtful value to the overall Allied cause. Most importantly, the moral boundaries are more blurred. Flame and Citron suffer pangs of conscience over the killings they carry out and never know whom they can trust. Is Winther in league with the Germans, or is he in fact pursuing his own personal agenda by settling private scores? Is Ketty, the glamorous woman with whom Flame falls in love, actually a double agent? Will the attacks on the Germans contribute to the liberation of Denmark, or will they simply provoke German reprisals against Danish civilians? Are the Germans in fact all villains? One high-ranking German officer claims to be part of his country's own anti-Nazi movement, and even if he is lying this claim does at least draw attention to the fact that by no means all Germans were pro-Hitler. The atmosphere of the film is, despite occasional action sequences, subdued, with a muted colour scheme, symbolic of the dark shadows which Nazi rule had cast over occupied Europe. Although it does, I think, finally reach the conclusion that the Resistance effort was worthwhile in that the self-sacrifice involved played a vital role in enabling Denmark to preserve its sense of national honour, it does at least dramatise some of the moral dilemmas involved in active resistance to a brutal occupying force. Modern dramas from continental Europe about the war are not particularly common, but this is one well worth watching. 7/10

Steve Crook Reputedly based on a true story. I want to take nothing from any resistance worker but I query a lot about what was in this particular film.Was Denmark the only country in occupied Europe where assassinations weren't followed by swift and brutal reprisals? There is no mention of them until a small example later in the film. The strange example of throwing a grenade into a tram sounds very untypical as an act of reprisal.Was Denmark the only country in occupied Europe where there weren't regular identity checks from the police and Gestapo? We only see two. The rest of the time these two people are allowed to travel around the city wherever they like. Even when the police arrive at the café where they've just had a gun battle and drive off in sight of the arriving police, but nobody stops them or follows them So they went around assassinating whoever they liked, even though most of them turned out to be innocent, and they still got rewarded with medals? Citron seemed to be surviving on pills, Flame refused to dye his trade-mark red hair. Did they want to be caught? With some decent direction and a story that made us care about, or even be interested in a few more of the characters, this could have been a good film - but sadly, it isn't

robert-temple-1 This is one of those Danish films which are attracting so much attention these days, and the actor Lars Mikkelsen who played Troels in season one of THE KILLING a year earlier (2007, see my review) even appears in it. It is a harrowing and ultimately sad tale, 'based on a true story'. It depicts the attempts by the Danish Resistance (all two of them, Flammen og Citronen) to struggle against the Nazi Occupation of Denmark. In that respect, it offers a view of a familiar subject in an unfamiliar setting, and is of considerable interest. The action is exciting but the film has a downbeat quality, because the Resistance keeps getting betrayed and whacked. The character called Flame has red hair, hence his nick-name, and is too brave to bother covering it up most of the time, though once in a while he is persuaded to wear a beret in the hope that at least his flame-red head will be a bit less obvious on his Resistance missions. He goes around murdering collaborators but is under strict orders not to murder Nazis themselves. It is a pity he didn't get more collaborators, but then there are always so many of such vermin whenever a country is occupied. There is a very pleasant large café where Flame and Citron and their friends foregather, with Nazi officers often sitting very near them. Considering how well known Flame was meant to be as a 'terrorist', I can't understand why he was never arrested in the café. But then that's the movies, I guess. The film is extremely well made, with a great deal of tension and suspense. The director, Ole Madsen, is highly talented. The performances by Thure Lindhardt and Mads Mikkelsen as Flame and Citron are very good. Lindhardt has appeared in 57 titles despite his youth, and Mikkelsen in 41. We have to remember that all these Danish people who are largely unknown to us are really highly experienced pros in their field, and that Denmark has produced more than just the film director Carl Dreyer whose work we all know and love. Other people have made films there too since the silent days, and because we find it difficult to distinguish between Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes (they have no such problems distinguishing between each other, and indeed do nothing but grumble about one another the whole time and ridicule each other's accents), we have often not realized who was really a Dane. For instance, the director Henning Carlsen who filmed Knut Hamsun's HUNGER (1966) was not a Norwegian at all, but a Dane, strange as that may seem. (And Per Oscarsson the actor who played Hamsun was a Swede.) One day we may get all of our Scandinavians sorted out and differentiate between all their broad vowel sounds, pinpointing the origin of each. (Swedes seem to be the broadest, Danes the most clipped and they use '-sen' endings on names instead of '-son'.) But until that day comes, we should keep an eye on those Danes, because they seem to be up to things. And this Danish film is well worth watching.

jjnoahjames The first thing I noticed when watching Flame and Citron was the directing, more precisely the camera angels, and acting. The main character, Flame (played by Thure Lindhardt), looked awesome in almost every shot and his partner Citron (Mads Mikkelsen) did an amazing job acting as well. This movie has a lot of good life lessons, and moral warnings.I liked the fact that it was based on true events. This makes it possible to look at the movie from a more realistic point of view. Flame and Citron encourages one to question life and reason in general from a realistic view rather than question the movie it's self. This all in accordance with war time events of course, and resistance fighters.I looked into the history behind the movie and it's neat to know that they have statues built in Denmark to commemorate these brave underground soldiers.